She hadn't been on the job long when a girl pulled a gun on her, she says.

"She was only in fifth grade," she recalled.

At a time when there were no bus radios and, of course, no cellphones, Price could only drive away as fast as possible.

And twice in the 1980s, bullets smashed through windows of the bus.

No one was hit, she said.

Then there was the time when a boy brought a big blacksnake aboard the bus.

"We got it off the bus," she said.

Other adventures included a tense moment when her bus was surrounded by FBI agents.

It turned out that a man had kidnapped his son from the boy's mother in New York. "He was on my bus," she said. "That was scary."

And then there was the time Price unwittingly played a part in a police capture.

She said she was delivering a child home when some kids started throwing oranges at the bus trying to break windows and then ran off into a subdivision.

Five deputies came and, while looking for the kids, Price said, one deputy came upon a woman and her daughter. They had killed the woman's husband and were cashing his Social Security checks, she said.

"And I was out there waiting," she said. "I didn't know what was going on."

Eventually the deputies told her the story and released her.

And there times that touched her heart, too.

"I've gone to court several times for my kids for child abuse," she said. "And later these kids — I've seen them grow up — came back to thank me for helping."

There also were other less dangerous, but still memorable, times during her bus years.

"I had long hair," she said. "I leaned over and it got caught in the fan. I took a pencil and had to turn it backwards."

Now, Price, 59, is retiring from her surprisingly eventful years aboard the bus.

All but three of those years were spent driving Hernando High School students.

Because she drove two daily routes with staggered school hours, she has served other schools, too, but Hernando High is special.